My Top 5 Sourdough Cookie Recipes by Make It Dough (2024)

FAQs

What is the best flour to use for sourdough? ›

Due to its wide availability and affordability, all-purpose flour is often my top recommendation for creating and maintaining a sourdough starter. In fact, I've been feeding my own sourdough starter Central Milling's all-purpose flour for the past 4 years.

The secret to sourdough is simple: water. The more water you add to your dough will affect how open the crumb (bigger holes and softer texture) will be once it's baked.

If you have too much starter compared to the additional flour and water you're adding, your hungry starter consumes all the nutrients and then it's not as bubbly.

Substituting all purpose flour in a sourdough recipe that specifically calls for bread flour is not always an even swap. You'll need to REDUCE the total amount of water first. All purpose flour absorbs less water than bread flour, which can make the dough too sticky to work with otherwise.

For more tang: Incorporate some rye flour and/or whole wheat flour early in the bread-making process, such as when feeding the mother culture and the preferment. Rye flour in particular will help your culture produce some acetic acid.

Keep the dough temperature higher: Lactobacillus perform well at the higher temperatures of 85-95ºF. Keeping the dough in that range will produce more acetic acid bacteria resulting in a more sour loaf.

We recommend baking sourdough in a Dutch oven. This lets you cover your bread for the first one-third of its baking time, allowing steam to build. This steam helps the loaf reach an ideal color and texture of crust.

Too little folding can result in weak dough. But too much folding can produce excessive tension and compressive forces. An over-folded dough might have a tighter crumb as the layers of alveoli push against each other and coalesce. In the worst case, excessive folding might cause a dough to tear under too much tension.

Can I let sourdough rise twice? ›

Final proof is also known as the “second rise” where you let the dough continue to ferment and rise after shaping and before baking. In final proofing, the yeast is past its peak and the rise will tend to be slower and less visible than in bulk fermentation.

stir your starter in between feedings - try stirring it twice in between feedings and really give it a chance to get oxygen into the mix. This will help to activate your starter without too much effort.

Looking for a more sour/tangier loaf? Try adding 1/2 teaspoon to 5/8 teaspoon sour salt (citric acid) to the dough along with the regular salt. To serve as pictured above, split a loaf around the perimeter, and layer one half with oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes (or oven-roasted cherry tomatoes) and fresh basil leaves.

As a general rule, the less sourdough starter you use, the slower your dough will ferment - resulting in a more sour flavored loaf. The more starter you use, the faster your dough will ferment - resulting in a less sour loaf.

All-purpose flour works great for feeding starter, but adding a little whole grain flour can help give it a boost if needed.

While bread flour is the best option, it can sometimes be used if you don't have bread flour. “Check the protein content,” advises Chef Jürgen, since it can vary from brand to brand, and an all-purpose flour that contains protein on the higher end of the range, 12 to 13 percent, will produce a better outcome.

A Dutch oven helps you to make perfect sourdough bread because it traps steam inside the pot which stops the crust on your sourdough forming too soon. This enables your dough to expand and spring up first, giving you a lovely soft and fluffy interior and a crispy, chewy crust.

Wheat 550 – flour with even higher binding power, ideal for baking with yeast and sourdough.